Share Your Story of Workplace Violence

When people learn that the healthcare sector leads all other industries in nonfatal assaults against workers, they’re generally shocked. When they hear that in 2010 more than 11,000 physical assaults against mostly nursing and residential healthcare workers happened, their jaws drop in utter disbelief. To say that these numbers, as intense as they are, likely don’t touch the tip of the iceberg because of the huge amount underreporting would be an understatement — and that’s why we need your story. Not many people know that nurses are in constant danger at work: we are getting stabbed with pens, inappropriately touched, punched, spit on, scratched, and more.

Many will ask, why don’t we have the same protections as other civil service workers? And that’s the right question: why don’t we?

Some states, such as New York, have laws that make it a felony to beat up a nurse. That law and others came about because nurses stood up and made their voices heard.

SEIU 121RN and the SEIU Nurse Alliance of California are working on a long-term campaign to get a workplace violence prevention Cal/OSHA standard for healthcare workers adopted. We need you to share your experiences of violence on the job with us so that we can share them with Cal/OSHA when we submit our petition. Click here to tell us YOUR story of workplace violence.

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